


This Miracle

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Marriage, POV Second Person, Returning to Alderaan, a surprising amount of crying for a variety of reasons and emotions, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 15:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: Leia Organa and Han Solo married three times, and only planned one of those occasions.(The first one was a whirlwind, the second time mattered, and the third was for everyone else.)





	This Miracle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



> I read your ToT Author Letter and basically went "oh wow you actually like 2nd person" and was immediately delighted and knew what I wanted to write for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Leia has always been one of my favorite characters, and she deserves so much joy.

The first time Han marries you is on Endor, a week after the second Death Star died and broke the Empire’s spine.

You’re drunk, and it’s mostly on Ewok moonshine but it’s at least a little on kissing and the sex you’ve had each night as the Rebel Alliance celebrates and slowly remembers that it needs to start gathering up all the little loose ends of not just winning a battle but a war. Tomorrow you’ll get on a ship again and fly back into the black and bright blue of hyperspace, but tonight is still for you; tonight you can laugh and dance around a fire to the drums and panpipes the Ewoks play.

The crown of flowers on your head rests easy there; your childhood come home to roost. A matching crown sits crooked on Han’s head, slipping down over one ear, one eye, petals somehow scattering into his hair more than into yours (but then, you’re used to having flowers braided into your hair, not just resting upon it). His smile is just as crooked, and sends shivers through you when he turns to you, eyes soft and smiling like he can’t believe that you’re here with him, holding his hand and dancing around the fire.

It’s late and stars whirl around your head and the Ewoks urge you to dance, to kiss, to leap over the fire. You do, laughing at how the flames lick your bare feet without any pain. Han catches you on the other side, having carried you the last bit with his longer legs and greater mass (which gives greater momentum). You stagger into his body, smiling up with him and feeling like maybe you could burst with sunlit joy.

In the morning, when you’re groaning over your headache, C-3PO informs you that this was a “partner bonding ceremony, similar to marriages in—” and then you cut him off and send him to make sure the _Falcon_ is fully stocked. Han’s face is a mix of terror and bewilderment and awe. You learn to love that look; you see it often, and it’s him all the way through, nothing hidden at all.

He doesn’t run, that morning. (You expect him to.  You turn back from seeing C-3PO's golden back exit and you expect him to be gathering up his clothes wild-eyed and bluffing about how he's got work on the  _Falcon_ he has to do.) Instead, he gathers you into his arms and says, “Married, huh?”

You laugh, and rest your forehead over his beating heart, and say, “I always imagined something with more ceremonies and speeches.”

“I can get that for you, if you want,” Han says, and it’s a reckless promise and you love him for it, because it’s nothing like he’d want at all. So you kiss him, and he kisses you, and C-3PO walks in on you half-dressed and makes a range of distressed noises until, laughing, you put your clothes back on and board the _Falcon_ to fly back to the war.

 

* * *

The second time you marry Han, you’re also drunk. This is a theme of those early days. (You only realise that years later, when you’re sitting in an office wishing achingly for the freedom and oblivion and celebration of alcohol.)

You’re on the _Falcon_ this time, sitting in the cockpit with a bottle of Whyren’s Reserve that Han scavenged up somewhere and the ruins of Alderaan floating outside. The booze is for you. So is the vista. Han hadn’t said anything when you'd put the coordinates into the _Falcon_ ’s navicomputer that morning, numbers you can never forget. He’d taken over and plotted the route, because for all that he’s awful at anything resembling formal math he’s brilliant at hyperspace calculations (even—maybe especially—when he’s taking risks).

So you’re staring out at the ruins of Alderaan, where survivors of this forced exodus have already started leaving memorials, little beacons flashing out _Remember Us_ with long lists of names following behind, loved and lost. Canisters of grave goods float through the asteroids, gifts for the dead. Some of them have longer messages, and the _Falcon_ lets out a soft ding each time one of them comes in range. Han eventually programs it to just save all the missives, because they aren’t for him and you can’t listen to them right now.

You’re here partially to hear those, to remember the dead.

You’re also here because if Han’s going to stay with you, he needs to understand it, this gaping hole he’ll never be able to fill. He may have seen it, but this wasn’t his planet. They weren't his people. It was yours, and this is the closest you’ll be able to get to articulating that.

You know that, sometime during the night, when you’re beginning to forget inhibitions in good Corellian whiskey (because, no, you couldn’t drink Alderaani wine tonight, though Han would’ve found it for you if you’d asked), you ask him to marry you. You give a speech, and in the morning you find it recorded: it’s only a little weepy and melodramatic, and it’s only a little overwheming to watch him hold you as you break down and cry.

(There’s also a recording of Chewie’s speech as he wraps leather around your hands and pronounces you a couple, bound together by life and love and intent and the Force. You can see Han crying during that speech, and that makes you cry even more.)

You leave behind copies of those recordings with words for your parents and all the Alderaani who may yet see this memorial.

The last words on that recording aren’t part of the speech you wrote and rewrote a hundred times. They’re words you say, quiet and small, for your parents alone (and, incidentally, for the galaxy at large):

“Mom, dad, I’m—I’m making a new family, and maybe they aren’t what you’d expected for me, but you’d be proud.” You could hear the tears in every word and didn’t hold back, sobbing as you ended the recording. “You’d be so proud of us all.”

 

* * *

The third time you and Han are married is the formal time, the kind of wedding you’d always expected you’d have as an Alderaani princess.

You’re sober but exhausted, because you gave birth to Benjamin Organa-Solo two months ago and he won’t sleep without you. You're also part of the staff managing the burgeoning bureaucracy of the New Republic, and that doesn’t help either. This whole marriage pageant is part of that bureaucracy and you can’t even be mad, because you grew up knowing that your marriage would be a state affair. This might be a different state, but the meaning is just the same. Han still looks shell-shocked and uncomfortable in his suit, but he’s here, and he’s dressed well, and he hasn’t freaked out publically yet.

The unending speeches drone on, and even knowing that they’re important politically can’t bring you to attend. Ben’s got all the attention you aren’t giving to Han, and you’re so grateful that the dressmakers worked out how to have a baby sling as part of a wedding dress, because Ben wouldn’t settle even for Luke right now. So you’ll change the whole aesthetic and force the whole of the galaxy to accept that yes, you had a kid before you had your formal wedding in the eyes of the New Republic. And that’s okay. Fuck anyone who says otherwise.

Mon Mothma finishes her speech, and now it’s your turn.

Han holds out a ring to you, and it’s beaten and dented and smells like oil and the spaces between the stars, because he made it himself from an old pipe in the _Falcon_. You could’ve had a more beautiful ring—and probably you will, one day—but he offered this to you months ago, when it first became clear you were pregnant, and you’ve been wearing it ever since. Nothing is going to prevent you from being married with it. You smile, and offer your hand. He slips the ring right back to where it should be, callused fingers caressing yours.

“Han,” you say, voice pitched perfect and steady only because you’ve been trained since you were born for this. “I love you.”

“I know,” he says, and the twinkle in his eye isn’t just roguish charm, even if he doesn’t want people to see him crying.

You smile at him, and continue. “You gave me wings when I needed them most, challenged me and asked me to defend my beliefs, and you listened—truly _listened_ —to me even when you disagreed, even when you were scared. You’ve given me all the best adventures in my life, including the one I’m holding today.” You touch Ben’s head lightly; he’s sleeping now and you really aren’t sure how he’s managing that but you’re grateful for that gift. “You’re adventure, comfort, and a new home in the stars. You’ll tell me, time and time again, that I’m out of your league. But, Han—I’m so happy to marry you.”

He laughs shakily, and reaches out to touch your hair lightly. He helped you braid it this morning, his broad, precise mechanic’s fingers holding strands in place as you pinned them around his hands in the old traditional Alderaani marriage styles. He doesn’t disturb the careful lines and arches, just lets his fingers drift along them.

Gently, you take his hand and bring it back between you, where you slip one of your heirloom rings onto his finger. It’s dainty and made of intricate golden swirls, and looks incongruous on his hand, but it fits there, and he’s worn it as long as you’ve worn his hand-made ring. It’s your heritage given to him, just as his was to you.

He clings to your hand a moment before he starts to speak, eyes still shining with tears.

“Leia, I...” he swallows. “I love you.”

“I know,” you murmur, quietly enough that it’s just for the two of you, like it always was.

“You’ve given me something I never expected to have,” he says, the first words of the speech you helped him prepare. Then he sniffs, wipes away a tear that’s beginning to fall, and goes, “Aw, who am I kidding.” He shakes his head, spreads his hands wide, and gives you that endearing crooked smile of his.

Then he starts talking, and you can’t tell if he’s practiced the words but they’re flowing and the aren’t the ones you helped him write at all. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the day we met, and you were spitting fire and mad at the galaxy and at me in particular, and you were burning so bright I didn’t want to look away. You’ve made me a better person, I guess. I was never gonna try that on my own. But hey, here we are.” He looks down at Ben, and puts his hand on yours, on Ben’s so-tiny back. “Here we are,” he repeats, and the wonder in his voice is what finally gets you to start crying. “I’m gonna marry you, and that’s gonna be a journey scarier than any run I’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to it more, too.”

You kiss him, through your tears, before Mon Mothma actually pronounces you married and invites you to kiss. Everyone cheers for you anyway, and you can hear, in the background, the old forms being invoked. So they get all their pomp and ceremony, and you get this new family, this miracle of life.

You’re damn certain you got the better deal.


End file.
